Weeknotes #185: Apps, animals and airports

Fizz, animals, pottery, sunshine, coding and books lead to Porto.

A close-up of a long-horned cattle breed at Mudchute Farm, its head lowered towards the camera with a pale, ridged horn curving upward, a yellow ear tag, and shaggy red-brown fur, with the fenced paddock and Canary Wharf's skyscrapers visible in the background.

Week commencing Monday, 3 August 2026

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 3/7; Exercise 4/7 and Move 5/7. (57%). Morning walks: 0/3. Office days: 1/3. Total steps: 50,835. 14.3 hours in meetings.

Life

  • Good news from PY’s job had us drinking fizz on Monday night and eating weekend leftovers.
  • By the end of the week, I’d built an iPhone app for my own use. I discovered that, for an app to work properly, I need to pay for an Apple Developer account, even if it’s just for me. I haven’t done that yet.
  • Related, in reality OpenAI Codex built it for me. I can see why some people think this is the future.
  • Tuesday, A’s 10th birthday was celebrated with a trip to Mudchute Farm and Park. Lots of lovely animals to look at, and it’s (mainly) free.
  • Related, there is an entrance across the ASDA car park. Walk towards the hand car wash.
  • Following that, we did pottery painting. I slightly regret choosing something with curves because the place provided stencils, which would have been much better on a flatter surface. I did conclude that I was no artist.
  • Saturday, a walk to M&S and Merton Abbey Mills in the sunshine. Lovely.
  • Sunday, at the airport, we talked about a previous holiday where we had a book club, reading the same book to compare notes. PY went to a shop, and we now have Adam Kay’s first novel, A Particularly Nasty Case, for the Porto book club.
  • At the end of Sunday, we were in a hotel in the heart of Porto, and I’d read a decent chunk of the book.

Errata

  • Last week, I wrote that The Newsreader had the perfect two-series story arc and had ended where it was supposed to. Oops, the only thing that had ended was Netflix UK’s willingness to show me any more of it. There is a third series. I had mistaken “all the episodes available to me” for “all the episodes that exist”, an easy trap to fall into when a streaming service hasn’t coughed up all the money. So, my grand theory about its elegant conclusion now joins the long list of opinions confidently formed from bad information. Think of me as your badly trained AI.

Media

  • BBC Two quiz night is always fun. We remembered it this week.
  • State of the Screens: Podcasts Became TV. Ad Budgets Didn’t Notice — Americans spent 40 billion hours with podcasts in 2025. That equals Netflix’s entire 2024 TV viewing. But podcast ads brought in just $3 billion, about 1% of internet ad spending.
  • New buddy series: Octavia Spencer and Hannah Waddingham in Ride or Die, on Prime.
  • An evening of Paul Heaton at the BBC was fantastic, even if it stopped me from packing.